Chiefs Trade Sneed to Titans for 2025 Third
The Chiefs sent L'Jarius Sneed to the Tennessee Titans in a move that many will question because of the low compensation.
Kansas City has traded away L’Jarius Sneed after his best year as a pro. Many expected that the Chiefs would trade him instead of paying him, but the compensation was thought to be much higher. Ultimately, the Chiefs could only get a 2025 third-round pick and a swap of their seventh-round picks in 2024. Sneed will receive a four-year $76 million dollar deal with $55 million guaranteed.
So the question is, why did the Chiefs make this move? There are several answers, but the biggest is the draft is just over a month away. The Chiefs didn’t want to be tied up through the next month with the possibility of a trade still sitting out there. This is done now; they know what they have headed into the draft regarding picks.
The other side of this trade is it opens them up to use the cap space to make additional moves headed into the third week of free agency. The Sneed trade frees up close to $20 million in cap space and gives them plenty of moves to make some additions. Just over a year ago, the Chiefs added Drue Tranquill to the roster in a move they couldn’t afford at this time.
If I were to guess what this money will likely go to, though, I think they use some of it, if not most of it, trying to sign Creed, Bolton, and maybe even Smith to extensions over the next few months. The Chiefs have a core of players, and signing them to extensions a year before becoming free agents keeps the cost down slightly. Kansas City will likely be in the trade market more and more in the years to come to try to keep the roster young and less costly to build around Mahomes.
I find the Chiefs haters are out in force w/ the article about the LJ Sneed deal violating the CBA. The claim is that the Chiefs never tried to sign Sneed to a deal & fraudulently used the franchise tag to impair Sneed’s market value. I find that argument just hate speech. I believe the holdup in the Sneed staying in KC plan was that Sneed wanted a bigger guarantee than just the $19.8M tag. Taking a position that Sneed’s signing value was negatively impacted by the tag ignores this is somewhat true in all cases. LJ’s biggest problem was he was a late bloomer. He came to the NFL at 23+ yo. That put his 2nd contract at 27+ yo. His knee inflammation only exacerbated his issues. It’s hard to feel sorry for a guy who was a 4th round pick, & just signed a generational wealth guaranteed contract. Thanks for all you’ve done LJ! Good luck going forward!
Timing of the Jones deal impacts this and Sneed was a 4th round pick. We got his services won SBs and he wanted the money. Agreed with the analysis and comments. Tough decisions have to be made from the group that traded Tyreek. In Veach we trust. If more teams were interested then we would have some higher picks. No team wants to be seen as helping the Chiefs. The Kingdom needs to savor the management team running the plan.